The curtain rises in the city for the 4th edition of GEA. GIOIOSAETAMOROSA – Treviso Contemporary Theater Festival, a contemporary theater review that will overwhelm the capital of the Marche from 20 to 30 June: 10 days of shows, workshops, creative processes, moments of discussion and dialogue with citizens which this year will all revolve around the theme (TRANS)HUMAN. The event debuts Thursday 20 June at the Mario Del Monaco Theater with the third edition of “Giuseppe Bepo Mafioli” Contemporary Dramaturgy Award, national writing award for the stage established by the Treviso Theater Committee in collaboration with the Veneto Region, the Municipality of Treviso, the Teatro Stabile del Veneto – National Theater and the Giuseppe Maffioli Archive. An opportunity to remember and celebrate the playwright, director and actor from Treviso, reward well-known and lesser-known playwrights on the national scene and at the same time involve citizens in a new enjoyment of the theatre.
As per tradition, the appointment is at 7.30pm at the Mario Del Monaco Theater for the official opening of GEA.24 – (TRANS)HUMAN with the ribbon cutting and the inauguration buffet. At 8.30 pm we will continue with the evening entirely dedicated to the “Giuseppe Bepo Mafioli” Contemporary Drama Prize, which will first see the competition awards ceremony followed by the mise en lecture of the winning drama which, new to the ’24 edition, will have a direction for the first time, entrusted this year to the actress, researcher and author Giuliana Musso. Among the 42 unpublished works received, in line with the themes of GEA.24 – (TRANS)UMANA or with those that represent the essence of the festival – love, joie de vivre, the Dionysian, pleasure and everything that of “gioiosoetamorous” can exist – the jury, 70% technical and 30% popular, declared the text the winner “Before taking to the field” of the playwright, actor, director and pedagogue Fabio Banfo. Born in Vercelli in 1975, he graduated as an actor at the “Paolo Grassi” School of Dramatic Arts in Milan. Since 2003 he has been a permanent member of the Teatro dei Sensibili. He has held directing courses at the Brera Academy and seminars in some universities in Chile and Argentina and has been an acting teacher at the Teatri Possibili in Milan and at Binario 7 in Monza and since 2017 at the MaMiMò Center in Reggio Emilia. He is the author of many shows, including “Alfredino, Italy at the bottom of a well” of which he is also a performer, winner of the “Best Show” and “Best Dramaturgy” awards at the 2017 Doit Festival in Rome, represented in various Italian theaters until 2021, the year in which he won the 2022 Fersen award for directing. In 2023 he received a special mention from the jury of the 2023 LGBTQ+ Carlo Annoni International Dramaturgical Award for his play “Kobane”. In March 2024 he won the Mario Fratti Award 2024 for Italian dramaturgy, promoted by Inscena! Italian Theater Festival of New York, with the text “El Desaparecido”.
“Before taking to the field”will then be proposed to the public for a staged reading by the Treviso Theater Committee and accompanied by illustrations by Elisa Canaglia of the Treviso Comic Book Festival. It is June 17, 2026, and in Istanbul, Paulo Stingo, Italian-Argentine football champion, playing for Atalanta, a few hours before a historic Champions League final, gives an interview to a journalist in which he declares his homosexuality . The journalist, understanding the enormity of the scoop he has in his hands and its possible consequences, before making it public, warns the player’s club, which will try in every way to make him recant before the start of the match. Locked in a locker room, waiting to know his fate, Paulo Stingo will meet a gallery of characters crucial to his professional and emotional sphere, playing a decisive match in which private and public life intertwine, while in the background the world of football and its history, with its peaks and its miseries. This is the chronicle of those 90 minutes before Paulo Stingo took the field or the end of his career.
In addition to the announcement of the winning work staged, which will be awarded a cash prize worth 1,000 euros, during the evening three Special Mentions will also be awarded by the Technical Jury for the texts considered particularly significant and the Mention Special Popular Jury Prize.
